1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device having a camera and a screen and displaying an image data imaged by the camera on the screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as digital cameras become widespread, there are increasing occasions in which images are loaded even in everyday life.
Additionally, as for portable terminal devices such as a cellular phone and a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), an increasing number of devices have sophisticated camera functions mounted thereto.
Some portable terminal devices perform sophisticated processings such as character recognition on loaded images.
Meanwhile, for example, in a cellular phone on which a camera function is mounted, when a photographic subject is imaged by the camera and an image thereof is loaded, usually an angle of view and a photographing distance are adjusted such that the image falls within a screen represented by an attached liquid crystal display before a shutter is pressed.
It means all of the image area displayed on the screen is saved. It is common that the area is usually set to be a rectangular shape.
However, users use the devices in various ways, and sometimes an area of an image required to be loaded does not match an area displayed in the screen, that is, the rectangular area.
In this case, the user has to cut out a necessary area from image data by carrying out troublesome image editing work after once saving the imaged image data in a memory or the like.
Additionally, since unnecessary image data are also loaded in the memory, though temporarily, an image size becomes large, wasting the memory of a digital camera or a cellular phone.
On the other hand, in a character recognition device or the like which is connected with a scanner, when an image of document or the like is loaded by the scanner and character recognition is carried out, it can be considered, as a method to designate an area to be character-recognized, carrying out a processing such as a layout analysis after loading a part or whole of the document as image data, displaying a result thereof by enclosing a character or a line, and making a user designate an area to be recognized.
However, in this case, the user has to designate a target area from a plurality of characters or lines.
Further, depending on a result of the layout analysis, the area may not be extracted correctly.
Also, if a character line which does not fall within the screen in one imaging is desired to be character-recognized, a plurality of imagings and recognitions are required to be repeated.
Additionally, in a portable terminal device such as a PDA, as a method to designate a desired area to be loaded as an image when recognizing such a document as newspaper whose column setting is complicated, there is a method in which an interface such as a touch panel equipped to the portable terminal device is used.
Though, in this case, a user can designate the area by the interface of the portable terminal device, in other portable terminal devices, for example, in a cellular phone or a camera, area designation is difficult since the devices such as a touch panel cannot be equipped due to cost concern.
As a prior art in which the area designation is carried out without using the touch panel, there is disclosed an art in which an image processing device comprises a position designating device to designate a position on an image in order for character recognition, a character recognition device to recognize a character included in a partial image including the designated position, a database searching device to search a database based on a character recognition result, and an information display control device to control displaying the searched database information along with an image on a display device (for example, see Patent Document 1).
In the case of this image processing device, though the touch panel itself is not used, the position designating device is connected to the character recognition device.
Therefore, it is required to connect some device for position designation to the character recognition device as in the case of the touch panel, resulting in a higher cost.
[Patent Document] Japanese Patent Laid-open Application No. 2002-222196